“Apparently Cheney was the hatchet man”, said the source. “Bush tried the keep his hands clean so he didn’t have direct involvement. It almost reminds me of the way Nixon used to operate…He assigned Cheney to be the hatchet man job on DSCOVR… Bush’s fingerprints weren’t on it but Cheney’s were… That’s what we heard through the grapevine.”

Our source did not want their identity revealed due to the pervasive culture of fear that permeates NASA under the Bush Administration: “People are somewhat intimidated – but it will all unravel. People will talk. It will come out. These things always do.”

“The reputation in early days was that Al Gore thought of it, so when Bush was elected the mission basically just disappeared. It never got launched. And that had never happened at NASA before…That’s what so weird about it. The people at NASA Headquarters, the ones who won’t return your phone calls and won’t talk about it - their position is that this is just a normal course of events. It’s really strange. They are obviously covering something up.”

Beyond Gore, there was also the issue that DSCOVR would further our understanding of climate change - something the Bush Administration was never keen on. According to our source:

“The Whitehouse…felt threatened by [DSCOVR]. They didn’t want to hear anything about the Earth changing because that meant climate change, and that means CO2 and then they would have to regulate CO2 and they just wanted to avoid anything to do with that… Cheney was the chief hatch man on climate change in general. That’s the rumor that went around.”

Our source is not surprised: “That’s going to be really hard to nail because Cheney is deleting all his emails.”

It turns out that the mission was always a weird one. The NASA leadership insisted from the start that this spacecraft fly into orbit aboard the space shuttle. Those close to the mission were incredulous.

“There was the stupidity of putting it one the shuttle. That was just absolutely silly. You don’t launch satellites to that high of an orbit on the shuttle. The normal NASA tradition is to launch a satellite like that on a rocket.”

Because DSCOVR had to go far beyond the low Earth orbit accessible by the shuttle, a large rocket motor would need to fly aboard the shuttle to boost DSCOVR to L1 one million miles distant. Not a good idea.

“A big rocket motor with its fuel tanks filled is basically a bomb. Using the shuttle as a carrier for what is basically a bomb is not smart. It was absolutely stupid from the get-go.”

So why was the mission forced onto the shuttle?

“There’s no good reason. NASA will give you reasons but there’s actually no good reason. It was a very strange decision. It was a decision that the science team tried to fight but were never able to even get to first base on,” said our source.

They were told by NASA brass ‘we’re going to launch it on the shuttle and that’s that and don’t talk to us about it and stop complaining’”.

Our source also provides a chilling insider account of how the spacecraft was on track to be launched by another agency as late as last year, but was abruptly cancelled.

“It seemed that everything was on track to give the satellite to NOAA and they would be refurbish and launch it and then - boom. It just disappeared off the radar screen and no one would talk about it. It was very weird. It gave me the creeps actually. I’ve never seen that happen at NASA before, where things would disappear and no one would talk about them. It was like the way people would disappear in a dictatorship regime.”

Our source made no bones about the importance of this novel experiment to provide continuous monitoring of the daytime and nighttime profiles of our planet.

While DSCOVR’s destinationL1 is one million miles towards the sun, there is another gravitational parking spot called L2 away from the Sun. If a similar spacecraft were also placed there, scientists would have simultaneous views of the both the daytime and nighttime profiles of our warming planet.

“Those two points would have been revolutionary for doing remote sensing of the Earth. All our satellites are in Sun-synchronous orbit meaning that they pass over the same time every day. So you have no way of getting information about the so-called diurnal cycle. DCSOVR and another satellite at L2 would mean the whole Earth would be covered.”

“Low Earth orbit satellites are not able to close the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget. It’s pretty far off - it’s quite an embarrassment… They can’t close the Earth’s radiation budget better than six watts per square meter. We have every reason to believe to that the Earth is out of balance by only one watt for square meter, which accounts the global warming. It was so embarrassing they kept it quiet for a while”

DSCOVR would not only solve that important problem but also provide a completely new perspective for NASA to carry out their important mandate of monitoring our changing planet.

“It would have been significant because it would mean that NASA was finally getting out of low Earth orbit, where they’re stuck. NASA doesn’t have any high Earth orbit satellites, not geostationary, not L1, not L2. It’s very weird. “

You would think that resolving the Earth’s energy budget at this point in history would be a priority for NASA, especially given they have a perfectly good $100 million instrument sitting in a box that would help them do that. But I digress…

NASA leadership have also frequently relied on the so-called Decadal Survey as a rationale for killing DSCOVR. This study was an effort to prioritize potential NASA missions for the next ten years. DSCOVR was not prominently featured in this assessment, but our source is not surprised.

“All the people involved in the Decadal Survey knew what NASA’s attitude toward DCSOVR was. They weren’t going to take on a political hot potato, why should they? It wasn’t that they thought it was a bad idea, it’s that they were politically sensitive… So they ignored it. So for NASA now to use their ignoring it as an argument against it is really hypocritical frankly.”

For some reason DSCOVR was also included in this assessment even though it was already built at a cost $100 million, something our source feels is incredible.

“It’s putting DSCOVR in the same hopper as un-built missions. And that’s kind of silly… It didn’t really need to be ranked by the decadal survey. Suppose every mission that NASA built was then subjected of to a panel of scientists to decide whether to launch it or not? That would be kind of silly wouldn’t it? The whole thing is just sheer hypocrisy.

What about the peculiar notion of the Air Force launching DSCOVR without the earth observing instruments as a way to save money? Our source it at a loss as to why NASA would ever consider doing that.

“That’s just bizarre… The instruments would have to be refurbished but NASA gave some ridiculously outsized estimate of what it would cost to do that. It was like ten times too high, in order to kill the idea of having Earth viewing instruments. There have been a lot of shenanigans around this mission. It’s embarrassing for me personally because I used to have huge respect for NASA and I’ve lost some. I’ve seen people do stuff that I would never thought I would see people do.”

Our contact was cautiously hopeful that things at NASA may change in the future.

“The Whitehouse created a climate of fear within government and that was intentional. But the administration is changing… Once Bush is truly out, things will start to unravel. Eventually the whole crowd at NASA headquarters will change and then there might be a new a spirit of openness. Or they might want to just bury the past and move on…”

And what about DSCOVR?

“It’s sad for NASA that they are stuck trying the trash DSCOVR when it’s actually a great idea…They hate it so much at this point that they are determined to put it in a box and keep it there forever…They’re just trying the figure out how to bury it.”

We at Desmog Blog will of course continue digging on DSCOVR to make sure that doesn’t happen. The cone of silence around this fascinating story is starting to crumble but the clock is ticking bring out the truth before the spacecraft is destroyed.

If anyone else close to this mission has information to share, Please contact me here in confidence. It will be our little secret…

Previous Comments

Great investigative work, Mitchell! This just adds to the dirt supporting the fact that Cheney is the most shameful Vice President in American history. I can’t wait for Obama and Biden to clean up the huge mess the US is in right now.

I was at NASA, serving under all 9 previous presidents. While some were better and some were worse, there’s none as bad as this one.Former colleagues simply say “Are you glad you don’t still work here?”

Public Information people were career veterans from off the civil service register and not political hacks. (George Deutch’s lack of an actual college degree was not noticed! a happenstance not possible with merit hires.) Public information was devoted to agency news, including , research, not to glorifying “Bush vision”. Each field station maintained its own web page. The web pages now are considerably restored after the nadir of the Bush reelection era, but may be still subject to central control. Rove figured that Public Information at the agencies was not to inform the public but to publicize the President. See the book “Censoring Science” for a detailed account of the reach of Rove into censoring NASA’s annual determination of the average global temperature.

There have been warnings – although the public statements may sound benign, don’t be fooled – by the incoming administration about those who have burrowed themselves into government in violation of merit procedures or actual credential requirements. (the Washington Post has carried articles on nonscientists obtaining scientific positions recently, as well as on the travesty of hiring 450 lawyers as Justice from one university.) It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It is easy to dump out new hires, but tenured people are difficult (in the absence of fraudulent representations.)

No, the extreme politicization and terrorizing of staff is new to this administration. R. I. P.

I was at NASA, serving under all 9 previous presidents. While some were better and some were worse, there’s none as bad as this one.Former colleagues simply say “Are you glad you don’t still work here?”

Public Information people were career veterans from off the civil service register and not political hacks. (George Deutch’s lack of an actual college degree was not noticed! a happenstance not possible with merit hires.) Public information was devoted to agency news, including , research, not to glorifying “Bush vision”. Each field station maintained its own web page. The web pages now are considerably restored after the nadir of the Bush reelection era, but may be still subject to central control. Rove figured that Public Information at the agencies was not to inform the public but to publicize the President. See the book “Censoring Science” for a detailed account of the reach of Rove into censoring NASA’s annual determination of the average global temperature.

There have been warnings – although the public statements may sound benign, don’t be fooled – by the incoming administration about those who have burrowed themselves into government in violation of merit procedures or actual credential requirements. (the Washington Post has carried articles on nonscientists obtaining scientific positions recently, as well as on the travesty of hiring 450 lawyers as Justice from one university.) It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It is easy to dump out new hires, but tenured people are difficult (in the absence of fraudulent representations.)

No, the extreme politicization and terrorizing of staff is new to this administration. R. I. P.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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